Lauren Hunter

We all know that volunteers are the lifeblood of any church. If churches had to pay each of their children's ministry teachers, small group leaders, women's and men's ministry leaders, and vacation bible school teachers, they'd be up a creek, fast. Some churches keep their staff incredibly lean and rely predominantly on volunteers while other churches have more robust staff members and fewer volunteers; either way, volunteers need to be screened, training, and thanked. Below are five resources aimed at helping your church lean in to the volunteer management process.

While each Christian denomination has slightly different needs, Catholic churches have unique needs that are unique to their faith and require their own specific church software to adequately handle and 'speak' the language of Catholicism well. Over the years, several Catholic-focused church software solutions have emerged to serve this branch of Christianity specifically.

It's increasingly hard to keep track of all the social media trends. For churches, keeping ahead of trends isn't perhaps the number one goal; however, keeping a pulse on what's going on in the world of social media can be helpful both to connect with church members through the most popular networks as well as keep current in overall church communication. While most still think of social media in terms of Facebook, Twitter, and all the other networks, the infographic below delves into other technologies that are easily leveraged by social media.

The future of online schools is exciting. Technology growth and internet speed has made it easier then ever to trade the traditional classroom for a virtual one. No longer confined by location, you can obtain a degree from the school of your choice in almost any topic. This opens great possibilities of continued education for church staff and volunteers. As you look over the following infographic, consider how far education has come. Note the trends toward interactive education and how the church could approach ministry with this type of focus.

"Holy Week" is the historical name given to the last week of Lent and the final days of Jesus' earthly life. Involving a large number of events and people, the period between Palm Sunday and Easter can be difficult to imagine. BibleGateway has created an infographic to help.

Ministry Brands, a growing Christian software company, announced today it has acquired ACTIVE Network’s faith division, including its Fellowship One® software product that provides a suite of programs to smoothly integrate church administrative functions. By acquiring ACTIVE’s faith division, Ministry Brands adds more than 4,500 churches to its portfolio.

Over the last week, we've had fun reading through the survey results that were submitted for our first ever church technology reader survey. While only 58 church leaders responded, the sizes of churches range from 15 people to 15,000 giving us a really great bird's eye view of ministry at every level from small to mega. The range of job roles by responders also covers every aspect of ministry from attender, to volunteer, to support staff, to pastor giving us a pretty well-rounded view of churches. We've included some stats via graphics below to unpack what technology tools churches are using.

LinkedIn is a great way for you to connect with pastors and other church leaders. To use it effectively, there are a few things to keep in mind. The following infographic outlines strategies for...